A can of cola and a camera: anything for a few views?

With nothing more than a can of soda, a coconut, and a camera, 24-year-old American vlogger Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov boarded a boat headed for North Sentinel, a forbidden island in the Indian Ocean. His goal: to catch a glimpse of the most isolated people in the world. A video that would shock the world—or maybe just go viral. But what began as a stunt could easily have ended in tragedy.

The Sentinelese still live as humans did thousands of years ago. No internet, no electricity, no contact with the outside world. What seems unimaginable to us is, for them, a deliberate choice. Every attempt at contact is met with arrows and watchful eyes. And anyone who comes too close risks not coming back alive.

In 2018, missionary John Allen Chau was killed when he set foot on the island. In 2006, two fishermen met a violent end when they ventured too near the shore. Even a rescue helicopter after the 2004 tsunami was chased off with force. Yet Polyakov, like so many before him, thought he would be different. That he would be welcomed.

Indian authorities have arrested the vlogger, and he faces years in prison. Not just for breaking the law, but for endangering a fragile culture that has been trying to survive — not despite, but because of its distance from the world — for centuries.

It’s a story that makes us uncomfortable. Because what does it say about us, that with cameras in hand we try to penetrate even the last places beyond our reach? That we’re willing to risk everything — even someone else’s peace, life, and history — just to be seen?